


Just You, Please, Just You

by AlwaysJohn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 12:35:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18828805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysJohn/pseuds/AlwaysJohn
Summary: A story of loss, love and forgiveness.





	Just You, Please, Just You

~J~

John stood at the kerb staring at the black door from the opposite side of Baker Street. It felt like ages since he’d been here, but it seemed now was a good time, well, it would never be a good time to see the flat once more, to say goodbye, to move on, or try to, anyway. Every day was a struggle. He expected it would always be so.

As the anniversary neared once again, so heavy was his guilt for abandoning his former landlady in the months after Sherlock’s loss, he arranged to send Mrs Hudson and Mrs Turner to Paris for the days prior to and including the day, presenting her with the gift when they met for lunch away from 221B. 

When she’d asked him to drop by to water her plants midweek, he’d agreed at once, thankful to be there alone. It would be difficult enough without her knowing looks and hovering. 

Alone was what he had now, but it didn’t protect him in the way that Sherlock had once pronounced. He was lost in an anaemic world. Again. 

Unaware of crossing the street, until he found himself at the door, hesitated a moment before turning the key. John glanced up at the knocker, pushed it askew as an homage to Sherlock, and stepped inside. He paused at the bottom of the seventeen stairs and gazed upward, toward the life that had been his for a brief time. 

With his eyes burning, and a lump in his throat that threatened to choke him, John backed away and turned to Mrs Hudson’s door instead. His flat visit had been long delayed; it could wait a bit longer.

John found Mrs Hudson’s five plants neatly placed on the window sill in the kitchen. Her thoughtfulness prompted a fond smile at the thought that he wouldn’t have to search for them. Using the watering can she’d left on the worktop, he gave each plant a generous drink, enough to last the few days until her return.

Still not ready to ascend the stairs, he tucked himself into the chair beside the door.

“Mrs Hudson leave Baker Street? England would fall.”

Sherlock’s voice echoed so clearly, as though his friend stood before him, but, of course, when he looked up, there was only a bone-marrow deep emptiness and a throbbing pain in the vicinity of his heart.

With a heavy sigh, John pushed himself to his feet. If he intended to climb those stairs, he’d need a bit of courage to help him get there. Mrs Hudson had tea somewhere. 

Only mildly uncomfortable for rummaging in the cupboards, John found the tea easily and a small unopened container of milk in the fridge. He smiled at the whistle of the old kettle, allowing it to continue its song for several moments while he remembered Sherlock’s preference for Watson-made tea. Mrs Hudson would have insisted he use her teapot and cosy and prepare his tea properly, but he poked at the tea bag with his spoon and left it to steep on its own. He didn’t feel very proper on this day.

It was while pottering around the kitchen to keep his mind away from painful memories that John noticed a bin bag beside the door. In her haste to depart, Mrs Hudson had apparently forgotten it. 

Opening it to be certain it was waste was a mistake. “Ohh, imagine what it would have smelled like after another few days.”

Leaving the door unlocked and slightly ajar, John rounded the corner of the building and from the edge of the sunless, neglected space he surveyed the area. Why their landlady called it her garden was more than John ever understood. Only weeds a called it home.

Oddly, he found the bins tipped over, end to end, close to the outer wall. A careful approach ended with an abrupt halt while his shocked brain struggled to process the scene before him. 

“Oh, god.”

Throwing the bins aside, John dropped to his knees to hover over the prone form of the man he thought he’d lost forever; the man who, before that moment, only lived in his memories. Pressing his fingers just below Sherlock’s jaw, he searched for a pulse. When he found it, slow, but fairly steady, he groaned with relief.

“You’re alive,” he whispered as he quickly checked for broken bones. The cuts and bruises on Sherlock’s face, though not serious, made his heart skip a beat or two, or a half dozen.

“Sherlock? Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes for me? Please, Sherlock. Would you do that for me?” John swallowed a sob that threatened to choke him. 

“Please, Sherlock.”

Slowly, and with great effort, Sherlock fixed his gaze on him. Upon seeing those beautiful eyes after nearly two endless, agonising years, John’s own eyes burned with unshed tears.

“Hello, John. I’ve missed you.” 

Sherlock’s voice was barely a breath, but it echoed in his heart, and when his best friend reached up to touch his face, and curled one arm around his neck, John’s tears, so long denied, did not obey.

For a moment John rested his forehead against Sherlock’s sternum until the fine tremors coursing through his too thin body and the heat radiating from him, set off all his doctorly alarms. 

“Sherlock?”

John tapped Sherlock’s cheek with his finger to get a response.

“I’m going to call an ambulance.”

Sherlock moaned, rocking his head side to side.

“Right, no hospital. I can’t carry you, shall I call Mycroft? I can get some blankets to keep you warm until he sends help.”

Sherlock grasped the front of his shirt, pulling him close. 

“Doesn’t know. Nobody knows. Just you. Please, just you.”

John gazed into his best friend’s red-rimmed eyes and couldn’t think of a single reason to refuse Sherlock’s simple request.

“All right.”

 

~S~

 

When his head cleared a bit and John stopped fading in and out, Sherlock found himself leaning against the building, John’s hands on his shoulders, and no memory of how he got to his feet.

“All right?”

He nodded, his words lost somewhere inside his head. 

“Sherlock.” 

God, how he wanted to let go and drown in the warmth and comfort of John’s voice. 

“Sherlock, put your arm around my shoulders so I can support you. If you fall, I won’t be able to pick you up.”

John’s arm around his torso and the sturdy hand at his waist gave Sherlock a sense of balance and security and a modicum of renewed strength.

“Easy. Let’s stay on the walkway, shall we? Slow and careful, love.”

The endearment wound itself around his heart like a soft blanket. A moment later, just inside the door, vertigo struck, but John’s strong hands were there, supporting him and guiding him onto a chair at Mrs Hudson’s kitchen table. John dropped to his knees beside him, framing his face with his hands. Sherlock rested his forehead against John’s and closed his eyes. 

“Light-headed?”

He tried to nod, but the movement made it worse. 

“Deep breaths, Sherlock, it will pass.”

“Ss-sorry.”

“No, love. You’re home and you’re safe, that’s all that’s important.”

“John, I have to tell you...” 

John pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Shut up.”

Sherlock nodded. “Yes, John.”

Anything more he might have said was hindered by John’s mouth on his. When they parted, John turned his head away, his cheeks brushed with a hint of color, but Sherlock touched his chin to guide his gaze back and managed a weary smile. The worried look in his doctor’s cobalt eyes slipped away, and the shy smile Sherlock remembered transformed his face.

“Better now? Up you go. You need to lie down and there are those seventeen stairs between us and your bedroom.”

Deep within the dark shadows, Sherlock wondered how long it would be before John’s anger bubbled to the surface. And it would, he had no doubt, but for right now, he’d discard the thought and gladly submit to John’s care.

 

~J~

 

The ascent was difficult. At the first landing, when Sherlock lost his footing, only John’s quick action of pushing him forward and down onto his hands and knees saved them both from falling backwards down the stairs.

John pushed back the damp hair on his forehead and leaned in close to his ear. “All right?”

“No.”

The weary admission broke his heart. “Go on, love, you’re the strongest man I know.”

Sherlock squinted at him. “I’m really not.”

John let his best friend’s moment of vulnerability linger for a beat or two before changing the subject to something he could control. His own emotions were shaky at best. 

Keep moving forward, Watson. 

“I’m no genius, but it seems to me that if you lower your center of gravity, you will lessen the chance of falling. Let’s try it. I’ll guide you.”

Sherlock seemed to consider the advice, and with John’s encouraging hand on his back, crawled up the last of the stairs.

“There’s a good lad,” John said once he caught his breath.

Sherlock huffed in what might have been annoyance. John wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw Sherlock roll his eyes.

 

~S~

 

So muddied was his thought process, and how deep his exhaustion, Sherlock couldn’t protest, even if he wanted to, when John guided him with a gentle hand against his lower back. He closed his eyes, trusting that John would get him where he needed to be. 

Somehow John had manoeuvred him into the bath without his knowledge. As he slowly became aware of John’s fingers feathering over his skin, he found he was oddly unconcerned that his doctor’s ministrations laid bare his still healing wounds.

“I’m going to wash your hair now, Sherlock, is that all right?”

Sherlock turned at the sound of John’s voice, a soft and caring balm to his battered self. “Yes,” he whispered, for the first time noting John’s sorrowful expression, but the thought skittered away before he could grasp it.

His moan, drawn out by the gentle massage, elicited a small laugh from John. “Like that? More?”

“Yes.”

He drifted, the desperate need for sleep circling him as though he were its prey.

“Sherlock?”

“Hm?”

“Keep your eyes closed.”

The water and motion of John’s hand rinsing away the shampoo drove a shiver up his back. The only thought that forced its way through the encroaching darkness inside his head was that he was with John and the warmth of that thought comforted him. 

His next lucid...somewhat lucid thought was that he found himself in his pyjamas, in his own bed, under a mountain of blankets. Had John drugged him somehow? No, not John. Angry? Yes. Cruel? No.

“John?”

At first only the quiet of the room greeted him, but as he lay in his warm cocoon, familiar sounds and aromas reached him. So, John hadn’t been a figment of his fevered mind afterall.

“John?”

Sherlock recognized the unmistakable sound of food preparation and...much to his annoyance, his stomach growled. He startled when John suddenly materialised beside the bed.

“Sherlock? You need to eat so you can take paracetamol for your fever.”

“John, paracetamol does not irritate the stomach lining so it won’t matter if I haven’t eaten,” he announced from under the duvet.

“It matters to me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock turned to see John standing beside the bed holding a tray of food. His doctor’s eyes shone suspiciously, too much to dismiss as anything but tears. Whether they were tears of joy, or sorrow or something else didn’t matter, he would remember this moment always. He looked away to the tray and cleared his throat to mask his discomfort. 

“Are those soldiers?”

“Yes.”

“And eggs the way I like them?”

“Yes, thanks to Mrs Hudson.”

“And tea?”

“Just the way you like it.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.”

Sherlock studied the food on his tray. “I can’t eat all of this, John.”

“I know. I thought, I mean, if you didn’t mind..I could join you?”

 

~J~

 

Sherlock stared at the tray a bit longer. “Oh.”

Certain he’d stepped over some personal boundary, John smiled to lessen the sting of Sherlock’s rejection. “Right. Well, it was just a thought, it’s okay if you want to eat alone..”

John turned away, taking a half step toward the door. “I’ll come back to collect the tray when you’re finished.”

“No!” Sherlock shouted, reaching out to circle his long fingers around John’s wrist. “Don’t go. Please. I want you to stay. Will you stay? Please?”

His please was hard to disregard, even if John wanted to, which he didn’t, and Sherlock’s low-level whinge was almost, no, it was adorable. So when his best friend patted the duvet, John hesitantly accepted the invitation, sitting cross-legged beside him, his knee resting against Sherlock’s.

John looked up to find Sherlock watching him. “Sorry,” he whispered, pulling his knee back.

There was a moment of held breath between them. John didn’t know what to do with that silence, but he felt the heat of embarrassment crawl up his neck. 

“I don’t mind. It’s all fine.”

A wave of relief washed over him at the remembered words from the night of the cabby. And his heart danced a bit in his chest.

 

~S~

 

Sherlock stared at John’s knee resting against his. He really didn’t mind, in fact, he rather liked it. 

“Food’s getting cold, you need to eat.”

Sherlock sighed. “Very well, John, if I must.”

“Yes, you must.”

While picking at his food, he averted his gaze in such a way that avoided direct eye contact, but still allowed him to observe John on the periphery.

“So you’ve been living here? While I was away?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Too many memories,” John said after swallowing his last soldier.

Sherlock watched him as he moved the food tray to the floor. The clearing of his throat and rapid eye blinking were two of John’s emotional tells that Sherlock remembered.

“The flat is too clean for it to have been unoccupied for two years,” Sherlock offered as an afterthought. 

John shook his head a bit. “I’m taking care of Mrs Hudson’s plants while she and Mrs Turner are in Paris.” 

“Paris?”

“It was a gift. From me.”

“Is there an occasion I’m unaware of or have forgotten?”

“No, Sherlock, no occasion, just my guilt.”

“What?”

“I think she hoped I would move back in so she cleaned the flat, aired it out. She probably hoovered.”

“What guilt could you have had regarding Mrs Hudson, John?”

John drew in a deep breath, not looking up, but staring down at his hands instead. “While you were gone, I wasn’t a very good friend. After I moved out, my visits were few and far between until I just couldn’t visit at all...y’know those memories.”

He’d missed something, so he responded with the first thought that entered his mind. “Yes, of course. A lot of memorable adventures began here.”

John looked up finally, holding his gaze and allowing his exhale to slowly release. “Yeah, no, well, it wasn’t remembering the adventures that were painful, Sherlock.”

“I don’t understand, John.”

The sad smile that crossed John’s face made Sherlock wish he’d learned so much more about John Watson before he’d left him behind. He suddenly realised he’d not observed a most important detail in those last chaotic days. 

“It was remembering you and how you made my life worth living. Then you were gone and you’d taken everything with you. I died that day, too, Sherlock. Everything inside me...just died.”

Sherlock waited, his breath knotted in his throat, unsure of what to say or what he might next hear, but it was the pain so evident in John’s blue eyes that took his breath away. He cared.

And something else as well shivered throughout his Mind Palace. 

 

~J~

 

The truth behind his words slammed against the wall of his chest like a runaway train. In all the time he’d grieved Sherlock’s loss, he’d kept it buried deep inside, pretended he was okay. And now that he miraculously had his best friend back, the pain of that sorrow threatened to overwhelm him because it was more than the loss of their friendship. He’d lost the man he loved.

“John?”

John pressed his face into his two hands. “I-” He struggled to keep himself together. If he gave in to it, he’d be a blithering, shameful disaster. Now that he knew his own truth, could Sherlock see it, feel it, too? Of course he could. He observed everything, whether he understood it or not.

“Come here.”

The moment Sherlock’s hands touched his shoulders, it was all over. He crumbled like one of Mrs Hudson’s biscuits.

 

~S~

 

Even with his weakened and damaged transport, Sherlock had no problem pulling John against his side and wrapping one arm around his shoulders. It wasn’t but a few moments later that John’s shuddering sobs against his chest filled the room, and his tears soaked through Sherlock’s shirt to dampen his skin.

Sherlock didn’t mind at all. He just held John tighter, offering him what strength he could.

 

~J~

 

Once the tears brimmed and fell free, John sobbed until there were none left. Two years worth. As he lay there, his head on Sherlock’s chest, he remembered standing before the grave; the only time he’d cried after losing his best friend. It was all he’d allowed himself then. Captain John Watson had taken charge of everything else.

“John?”

“I’m okay, Sherlock.”

“No, you’re not okay, but you will be.”

“Sherlock, it’s all right.” 

“No, I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you by leaving and returning. I’ll spend the rest of my life..."

“Don’t, please, Sherlock. All you have to do is stay. I’ve got you back, you gave me the miracle I asked for, I don’t need anything else from you except your friendship.”

“You have that, John. I’ve only the one friend, you know. You’re that one.”

John tried to move away, but Sherlock held firm. 

“I don’t understand why it is that you’re not angry with me. Perhaps you’ll tell me one day, but in the interim..” 

John was sure his face was a blushed and blotchy, but as Sherlock wiped away his tears with the pad of his thumb, his gentle touch and the way his blue-green eyes softened as their gazes held each other, John knew it didn’t matter.

“..I’m not letting you go.”

 

~S~

 

Exhaustion hung on John like a shroud, and as Sherlock had promised, he didn’t let go, he held on, even after John’s breathing became soft and steady as he slept.

For all that he had suffered physically and emotionally, god, how he had missed his doctor every minute of every one of his days away, John’s grief had taken a toll far greater than his own. 

For a time, with John safely asleep in his arms, all was well.

It was the vibration that woke him. His eyes snapped open, all his senses on high alert. The man who was his everything was not curled against him, nor cocooned in his arms; he lay at the edge of the bed, chest heaving, eyes unfocused and awash with tears, caught in a dream from which he couldn’t break free. 

“John?”

And it was the whimper that caused Sherlock’s heart to stutter in his chest. To allow his doctor to suffer a moment longer was unacceptable. He reached out, resting a tentative hand on John’s shoulder.

“I’m here, John.”

“Sherlock?”

“Hush now, you’re safe.”

John reached out to him with a trembling hand. “Sherlock?”

“John, focus, tell me.”

John sighed heavily. “I got lost in my grief, but I always... always there was a part of me, deep inside, that never gave up hope that you were alive somewhere and one day you’d find me again. It’s all I had to hold onto.”

Sherlock pulled John against his chest, cradling his fair head with a hand at his crown. 

“It was always my intention to come back to you and tell you all the ways you made me a better man. I am sorry that I took so long and that I hurt you so deeply.”

“You left me behind.” John’s voice wavered with palpable hurt and Sherlock’s heart broke for him.

“I hope that one day you will forgive me, but I have no right to ask that of you.”

“I forgave you a long time ago.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I love you, you berk.”

Sherlock offered a gentle smile. “I was an idiot.”

“Yeah, you were, but so was I.”

“John?”

“Yes?”

“I love you, too.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yes.”

They gazed at each other.

“John, you aren’t going to cry again, are you?”

“I think so.”

“May I join you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Never say never, but this may be my last reunion story. Unless a good idea pops up, I have no more in me.


End file.
